More like this

Apple forks out nearly $2bn for two ripe, green data centres

Clean, renewable and partially tax deductible

Apple is spending $1.9bn (£1.24bn) on a pair of big, green, environmentally friendly data centres in Ireland and Denmark.

The fruity firm is splashing the cash (equivalent to €1.7bn) on two 160,000m2 facilities in County Galway, Ireland, and Denmark’s Jutland.

The facilities will back-end the iTunes store, App Store, iMessage, Maps and Siri for customers in Europe, and come online by 2017.

They will run entirely on clean, renewable energy sources while Apple will also work with local partners to develop additional renewable energy projects.

The plants will have the lowest environmental impact yet of any Apple data centre, Apple said.

The fruity fondleslab flinger is spending more on these two facilities than IBM committed to the 15 centres it announced last year, to expand the systems giant’s cloud delivery capabilities. Apple committed $2bn to a data centre in Arizona last year.

That said, Apple’s largesse comes with some handy benefits.

Apple will get more for its money by building in the euro zone than had if it had gone elsewhere, thanks to the weakened state of the euro.

Firms in the EU can also deduct parts of the construction costs from their tax bill if they invest in certain pre-approved energy sources and types of equipment.

Ireland has been ranked seventh in a list of 21 countries in KPMG’s Green Tax Index on this basis.

The country’s goal is for 20 per cent of its energy to be generated by renewable resources by 2020, and 80 per cent by 2050. ®